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Canada’s Wonderland sign

Modelling things in Solidworks has become sort of a hobby. With every new attempt, I’m learning about more features and how to accomplish things in other ways. Earlier this week, I wanted to try modeling a building but that didn’t turn out so well. Today, I tried modeling something I’m very familiar with: the “old” sign from Canada’s Wonderland. It went through many changes over the years until it was finally removed last year. Here’s a picture I used for reference, taken with my crappy camera phone in 2011:

It began very well. I learned how to do arcs (for the Cedar Fair coaster logo) and how to use a picture to sketch something (the logo text). I ran into a lot of errors doing the text that I almost gave up at that point. I tried working around it, and eventually just turned off the warnings altogether.

I also learned a lot about appearances in this model. Not only did I take coloring a little more seriously this time around (remember observation deck USA?), but I also used images on this model like the stone on the pillar and the Cedar Fair coaster. This is the final sketch with shading and borders:

And here are the “photoshoot” photos. They’re rendered at the maximum setting, which my computer did not like at all.